By Ozumi Abdul
Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) on Wednesday presented laptop computer and handsets prizes to the winner of its 8th edition of Report a Project Competition.
The winners are Adamu Usman Garko from Gombe who came first with Laptops prize, Hussein Musa from Abuja that emerged second with a handset prize, and Zubair Onireke Zubair from Kwara state, who came third with a handset prize also.
While speaking, CITAD program officer, Ali Sabo said that the project which is its eighth edition has the support of the MacArthur Foundation, adding that it is geared towards encouraging people, especially students of higher institutions to report abandoned protects in their individual communities.
He said that the project’s major aims are to cultivate the habits of tracking, monitoring, and evaluating the activities of government officials at the national, state, and even local levels in people, in order to ensure that there are values for money, efficiency, and continuity in what governments are doing.
Sabo also noted that CITAD has engaged in the project for the past five years, with hundreds of applications being received from students across the entire country.
He added that prizes such as laptop computers have been awarded accordingly to the first position, and handsets to the second and third positions respectively.
Sabo said that this very eighth project saw nineteen submissions from students across the country and that the submissions were sent to the panel of judges, who came up with six selection, that was further subjected to public voting which brought about the final three winners.
In his remarks on behalf of the CITAD Executive Director, the CITAD Community Network Coordinator, Malam Haruna Adamu Hadejia said that the project has the attributes of transparency, openness, and accountability.
He lamented that most times people don’t see public projects as their own, while the society at large suffers the brunt of such nonchalant attitudes in the long run.
“Most times people don’t see public projects as their own, they will say is it not government’s property, while at the end of the day, the entire society will be the one at the receiving end”, he said.
He added that one of the core values of CITAD is to hold the government accountable, the reason CITAD with the support of the MacArthur Foundation deem fit to come up with a project of this nature.
The winner of the first prize in a laptop computer, Mallam Adamu Usman Garko expressed his delight in receiving the prize, while he also promised that he will continue to monitor the abandoned projects in his locality.
He also promised to start encouraging others around him to follow suit.
